December 20, 2005

Mor kolumbu aka buttermilk curried sauce

On curry week, day #6 today, we would like to bring your kind attention to Nupur's post on "making curries - 101". It was a sheer coincidence that we both were thinking of Indian curries at the beginning of this week. We at My Dhaba had begun the journey through Indian curries this week with a theme named "curry week" and Nupur started off with "curry worry - how to get the perfect curry!". In her own words, the idea of this post is to share various techniques to get an Indian curry with the perfect consistency - not too thin and not too thick. Read more here.

My Dhaba's curry of the day is mor kolumbu or kuzhambu aka buttermilk curried sauce. The other Indian vernacular names for butter milk are chaas (Hindi/Gujarati), doi (Bengali), moru (Malayalam), majjiga/e (Telugu/Kannada), mor or more (Tamil). Correct us if we are wrong somewhere on this please.

This is one of the most simplest curry dishes that we cook at My Dhaba; so easy to prepare but the result is so unique. You would really love it.

Method: Soak the rice and tuwar dal in a cupful of water for 30 minutes. Keep aside one tablespoon of chopped onions and a sprig of curry leaves. Grind the soaked rice, tuwar dal, green chilles, ginger, coconut, remaining onions and a sprig of curry leaves all together to a smooth paste and keep it aside. Churn the buttermilk till smooth; add salt and keep it aside. Heat a vessel and pour in the oil+ghee mix. When it becomes very hot, add the mustard seeds to splutter, cummin seeds, half-broken red chillies to turn crisp, fenugreek powder, remaining curry leaves, and remaining onions. Stir for a while or till the onions turn limp. Pour the ground paste, turmeic powder, and white pumpkin along with a cupful of water onto this mixture, stir well, cover it, and cook for 5 minutes. Allow it to cool. Now add the seasoned curd, stir well, and let it bubble up to boil just once and remove immediately from heat. Serve hot or cool; in either ways it tastes delicious. Enjoy!

Read more details about My Dhaba's curry week here. We look forward to your participation. There are quite a large number of tempting requests for veg and non-veg curries. We now ponder about continuing this theme for one more week. What do you think? As always, your feedbacks are our inspiration. Cheers!